Whether you play as one of the elite marine Frontiersmen or the vicious alien Kharaa, you must use unique strategies and your abilities to win. Marines form persistent squads to find and destroy alien hives. Aliens can choose a wall-running Skulk, pudgy Gorge, flying Lerk, murderous Fade or gigantic Onos that can smash through doors.

Real-time Strategy

Commanders play from overhead to lead their team to victory. Build structures anywhere, collect resources and research upgrades. Marines buy weapons at an Armory or build sentry turrets and siege cannons to assault the enemy. Aliens build upgrade chambers, evolve special abilities and plant traps.

Dynamic Environments

Spreading alien infestation deforms hallways and causes space station power failure, turning off lights and shutting down marine powered structures. Use a flamethrower to clear infestation or weld a bulkhead shut for a last defense. Every game is different.

Unlimited Variations

WYSIWYG graphical tools and powerful scripting allow you to create new weapons, scenarios or entirely new games. You'll get all our tools and Lua source code we're using to build NS2. Ongoing automatic updates keep the game fresh by adding new maps, weapons and abilities.

Buy Now! for $19.95 (price increase after July 26th), or $39.95 for the Special Edition.

I can't believe there is no official thread for this game yet. The last topic about it was back in July of 2009.

If this game is half as good as the first, it will be one of the best PC shooter games in recent times.

The Alpha starts July 26th, if you preorder the Special Edition, you get Black Marine armor, access to the Alpha on the 26th, and of course the full game when it releases. The special edition will be unavailable after the 26th, in which case you can only preorder the normal edition which DOES NOT get you into the Alpha, only the Beta.

I played the first game for 5 years before I was VAC banned (towards the end I started getting bored and started hacking), it was the single best FPS experience I have had on the PC since the original UT. If the sequel follows in the original games footsteps, it will be the next best FPS experience with recent FPS games.

The entire game logic is coded in Lua, so it will be a modders paradise, you can change the Lua files and instantly change gameplay (they will likely use a system like Steams sv_pure to ensure file consistency).

UPDATE:

Natural Selection 2 Alpha is now available to download, you will not be able to play until the Alpha Activation keys are released at 9PM EDT (6PM PDT). But go get your game downloaded so you do not have to wait until the keys are released to do so. - Special Edition owners only.

The original was awesome but I'm a little wary of playing an alpha. If there are impressions before the 26th and they're good, then I might pre-order it.

Understandable, you may want to listen to some of the podcasts (posted on their site and on their twitter), they talk about a lot of the changes feature-wise over the first. My reason for preordering is partially for the black marine armor (looks awesome), but also to enjoy the beta as well. Just remember, you have a very limited time from when I posted this topic to preorder (5 days ), so don't take too long on deciding.

Understandable, you may want to listen to some of the podcasts (posted on their site and on their twitter), they talk about a lot of the changes feature-wise over the first. My reason for preordering is partially for the black marine armor (looks awesome), but also to enjoy the beta as well. Just remember, you have a very limited time from when I posted this topic to preorder (5 days ), so don't take too long on deciding.

I might just fold under the pressure and pre-order it, especially after seeing the latest screenshots (I didn't know they added 3 new ones). I was a huge fan of the original - so much that I convinced most of my gaming friends to play. And knowing that the same developers are behind this one, it's somewhat of a relief to finally see it coming to life. All in all, I really hope the alpha isn't a horrible mess.

I'm still amazed that a former mod team has made a completely new engine that looks as good as NS2's does.

Yeah, they were going to make NS2 a source mod game, but they found many aspects they wanted to include (such as the overhead view for the marine commander) were not working as easily or how they wanted it to, so they would essentially be rewriting parts of the Source engine to try to create the game how they wanted it. Instead, they decided to create a new engine from scratch, and found development to be going much faster than the work they had been doing on the Source engine.

Yeah, they were going to make NS2 a source mod game, but they found many aspects they wanted to include (such as the overhead view for the marine commander) were not working as easily or how they wanted it to, so they would essentially be rewriting parts of the Source engine to try to create the game how they wanted it. Instead, they decided to create a new engine from scratch, and found development to be going much faster than the work they had been doing on the Source engine.

I was more interested in it back when it was announced, but the long delay since then up till now caused me to lose some interest (but not all......I did spend nearly 5 years playing the original NS). With its Alpha coming, I am getting a bit more interested in it again.

Also, it seems they plan to use netcode similar to the original HL, but its written from scratch, not just a library or anything they found and decided to use.

WHats the price on it? Is it free like the old mod or does it cost now?

Its going to be a full retail game, $39.95 for the Special Edition (only available until the 26th), and $19.95 for the normal edition (no Alpha access). The price is rising when the Alpha starts, rumored to be going up to $29.95 (early pre-orders get a discount, basically).